Technology must be welcomed, not feared

Craig Baty

“Planet of the Apes,” “28 Days Later,” “Mad Max”—what do these movies have in common?

A very negative view of technology, one that particularly looks at how it can destroy people, said Craig Baty, Fujitsu Australia vice president for global strategy and digital services.

It’s a view that the multinational IT equipment and services company doesn’t share, Baty, who was in the country recently to speak at the fourth Fujitsu World Tour Asia Conference Manila, pointed out.

“Fujitsu believes technology will help us create a better future, not destroy it. Artificial intelligence will only go mad if we let it. We’re not going to let technology take over; we’re going to create technology for the good of humans,” Baty said.

With the theme “Human-centric Innovation: Digital Co-creation,” the one-day conference focused on Fujitsu’s blueprint for companies undergoing digital transformation, compiled in a three-part publication titled “Fujitsu Technology and Service Vision.”

“Technology should have people at the center, accessing that technology to solve problems. We call it human-centric intelligent computing to create a human-centric intelligent society,” Baty said. “The way we do this is by working with humans. Digital cocreation is all about blending business and technology to solve some kind of a problem, creating new value [by] working with our partners, customers, suppliers, all the Fujitsu divisions, to create something that couldn’t exist before.”

This can be achieved by using the four “pillars” of digital transformation: the Internet of Things (IoT), which, as Baty explained, is “ everything connected to everything—your cufflinks connected to your keys connected to your phone; cloud and hybrid IT (connecting old IT systems, or “systems of record,” with the new ones, also called “systems of engagement”); security; and artificial intelligence (AI).

“We tend to refer to it as IA—intellectual augmentation, wherein we use computers to augment our own intellect,” Baty said.

He cited as an example of how these pillars work The Institute of Sanitary Research of San Carlos Hospital in Madrid, Spain. Looking to make use of its enormous data archive, the hospital collaborated with Fujitsu to create Hikari (“light” in Japanese), a clinical research information system that utilizes AI to allow doctors access to integrated, grouped and anonymous data obtained through both clinical and nonclinical sources.

The system identifies care patterns, establishes demographic profiles, and provides explanatory analysis of datasets, which helps doctors make clinical decisions faster.

Another example is the Instruments and Electronics (Shanghai) Associates Group (Inesa) in China, with which Fujitsu cocreated a “smart factory.”

Using an IoT-based solution, Fujitsu came up with the Enterprise Application Intelligent Dashboard, a platform for the state-owned, smart city solutions company which improved the monitoring of factory operations.

The platform helped increase productivity by 25 percent and reduce manufacturing time by 50 percent, thanks to real-time updates on production management, quality and scrap rate, energy consumption and equipment status.

Such projects, he said, are part of Fujitsu’s “mission” to educate more people about the importance of digital transformation.

“We did a digital disruption survey over 1,600 C-level executives, and 75 percent said their businesses would change over the next five years. We think that’s very low; we’re wondering what the other 25 percent are thinking,” Baty said. “If you’re not going to be a leader in the industry, you’re going to be a follower. In digital transformation, you’re going to be left behind.”